BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI

& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, September 5, 2019

—Seb Gorka “reluctantly” hawking fish oil pills

CLIMATE NEWS NETWORK

For seven hours on Wednesday, the 10 leading Democratic presidential candidates responded to questions from CNN anchors and audience members in a first-of-its-kind candidate forum dedicated exclusively to the issue of climate change. 

How’d it go? Pretty well! And there was some news: 

• Kamala Harris, who has been non-committal about the filibuster, said she would support abolishing it to pass a Green New Deal. That’s good! Facts don’t care about your feelings, just like famine and pandemic disease and such don’t care about courtesy in the goddamn Senate.

• Elizabeth Warren put on a master class for Democrats dealing with scare tactics from Republicans and the fossil fuel industry: “They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your light bulbs, around your straws, and around your cheeseburgers, when 70 percent of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries.”

• Julián Castro pushed for "new civil rights legislation" to address environmental racism and allow individuals to file lawsuits against polluters. "I know that too often times it’s people that are poor, communities of color, who take the brunt of storms that are getting more frequent and more powerful,” he said.

• A graduate student caught Joe Biden a little flat-footed by asking him to defend a fundraiser he scheduled with former adviser Andrew Goldman, who co-founded a natural gas company. Biden ultimately relented, “What I was told by my staff is that he did not have any responsibility remaining to the company. He was not on the board, he was not involved in the operation of the company at all. But if that turns out to be true, then I will not in any way accept his help.”

• Beto O'Rourke announced that he’d prefer establishing a regulated market for greenhouse gas emissions—a so-called “cap and trade” system, like the one we used to phase out ozone-depleting substances—over a more straightforward carbon tax. He also said he would support using federal funds to help people in flood-prone areas move to higher ground.

• Pete Buttigieg said he believes fighting climate change might be harder than winning World War II. He’s sadly right—everyone has to be on the same side this time, and the enemy isn’t bombing anything. 

Forum vs. Debate. Climate activists wanted the Democratic Party to sanction a climate change debate, but instead they got a seven hour series of town halls. Not ideal.

That said, it was remarkably substantive! The questioners in the audience kept most of the cable-news nonsense to a minimum and the anchors seemed unusually aware that they’d be in for criticism if they boiled climate change down to...well...cable news nonsense. Chris Hayes, a progressive host on MSNBC, who has grappled publicly with the ratings challenge of covering climate change, tipped his hat to his competitors. Ideally, this kind of thing can happen on a regular basis, instead of jamming a seven hour special in between debates.

A federal judge has ruled that the government’s database of “known or suspected terrorists” violates the constitutional rights of American citizens whose names are on the list. Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the government has relied increasingly on watchlists with opaque standards, prompting backlash from civil liberties advocates.

As of 2017, 1.2 million people were on this particular list—4,600 of whom were American citizens. Being on it invites heavier scrutiny at airports and by police, and can prevent people from entering the country. The plaintiffs in this case were a group of nearly two dozen Muslim U.S. citizens who challenged the list’s constitutionality, and the judge decided that the “risk of erroneous deprivation of plaintiffs’ travel-related and reputational liberty interests” were not sufficiently addressed by the existing safeguards.

Lovett or Leave It is coming to NYC’s Radio City Music Hall on September 13th. That’s what happens when your podcast is a hit—you do a show at Radio City. And that’s not all. Guess who’s coming with?

We’ve got Stacey Abrams, and Desus & Mero, and Wyatt Cenac, and Alyssa Mastromonaco, and Dulcé Sloan. Eat shit, Rockettes. 

Come see us LIVE → go.crooked.com/radiocity

Hurricane Dorian, now a Category 2 storm, has reached South Carolina, flooding Charleston, and leaving over 200,000 people across the Carolinas and Georgia without power. 

President Trump will take $3.6 billion in funding from 127 Defense Department projects, including schools and daycare facilities for military families, to fund his dumb wall. Nearly all Republicans voted in support of the fraudulent emergency declaration Trump used to raid these funds, including several vulnerable incumbent Republican senators. 

The U.S. and China will resume trade talks in Washington in early October, despite the fact that new tariffs $100 billion of Chinese imports, as well as retaliatory tariffs by the Chinese went into effect on Sunday. 

Google has agreed to pay a $170 million fine for illegally collecting personal information from kids and using it to target them with ads on YouTube. $136 million will go to the Federal Trade Commission, while the remaining $34 million will go to New York State. 

The Department of Education has fined Michigan State University a record $4.5 million for its “complete failure to protect students” from Larry Nassar—the disgraced former sports doctor who abused hundreds of women and girls, including the country’s leading gymnasts. The Michigan State endowment is nearly $3 billion.

The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed the Department of Homeland Security for materials related to Trump’s repeated offers to pardon officials who break the law to implement his immigration policies. The subpoena gives acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan until September 17 to turn over the materials.

The sequel to Crazy Rich Asians lost its would-be screenwriter, Adele Lim, after offering her one-eighth of her white co-writer’s salary.  

The NFL will return for its 100th season tonight when the Chicago Bears take on the Green Bay Packers. 

Rapper Nicki Minaj says she’s retiring. See ya in a couple months for the comeback album.

Protests in Hong Kong will continue, despite leader Carrie Lam’s decision to withdraw the controversial extradition bill that ignited them in the first place. The protesters, who have built a larger pro-democracy movement, issued four main demands apart from the bill’s withdrawal: 

1. An independent inquiry into the police response to the protests
2. Amnesty for people arrested during the protests
3. More democratic reforms
4. For officials to stop characterizing their protests as “riots”

In the short time since Walmart asked customers to stop openly carrying firearms in their stores, Kroger, Walgreens, CVS, and Wegmans—four of the country’s largest grocery stores and pharmacies—have followed suit.

In announcing its official statement, Walgreens recognized the advocacy of activist group Moms Demand Action in affecting their decision. Even if the government won’t act on this issue with Republicans in power, you still have power of your own. Activism works. Keep it up. 

Support Moms Demand Action and learn how to volunteer → 

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